Sage Library System User Council
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
Minutes
Video Recording is available.
Call to order & roll call (Chair)
In attendance: John Schoppert (acting chair), Beth Longwell, Brent Mills, Ryan McGinnis, Dea Nowell, Marie Baldo, Maggie Pando, Marsha Richmond, Erin Wells, Mary Reser, Linda Stahl, Denine Rautenstrauch, Debbie Lind, Ann Zuehlke, Buzzy Nielsen, Robert Savage (La Grande City Manager), John Lackey (La Grande City Council)
II. Additions/deletions from agenda (ACTION) (Chair)
III. Approval of July 2015 minutes (ACTION) (Chair)
Corrections to July 2015 draft minutes – date should be July 7 and extra word “Karen” should be removed. Minutes approved with noted corrections.
IV. Open forum for the general membership (Chair)
Proposal by La Grande City council to charge library user fee
La Grande City Council and Budget committee have been working on options to generate additional income. One of the options under consideration was the charging of a user fee. State Library sent a letter to them indicating that a user fee cannot be charged because it would deny access to individuals who can’t afford to pay. Robert Savage and John Lackey asked for suggestions on generating library income and asked if any libraries are charging a fee. Hood River County and Hermiston Public indicated that they are charging a fee to non-residents based on the estimated cost of providing service for a single individual in their tax district. This is not a large revenue source. Buzzy brought up the fact that although they are not perceived as an immediate need like the fire and police departments, libraries perform a long-term, preventative role. Some discussion occurred regarding the necessity of cutting hours/services as needed to balance budget. The La Grande representatives thanked Sage for their time and left the meeting at this point.
V. Reports
Sage staff (Longwell/Mills) : Brent and Beth have been tackling quite a bit of clean-up in the system. Site visits have been taking place and bills for Sage membership will be sent out shortly. North Powder Public will be transitioning to full circulating partner. Brent has begun a Linux training course and has been working with EOU IT staff to become more familiar with Sage equipment and making updates. Work was done on updating custom OPAC templates “Need Help” feature and staff help pages.
Cataloging Committee (Samuels/Trunnell): Sarah shared that the committee has been working with David who has been doing quite a bit of regional training, one-on-one assistance, and providing cataloging tips. They have started discussion on qualifications for moving from cat2 to cat1 cataloging. Understanding and adjusting relevancy ranking is also a concern and the committee asks that staff send examples of searches that return poor relevancy. Updating the cataloging standards manual to RDA and enhancing cataloging content on new web site are also a focus of the committee. A new chair for the committee is being sought and nominees are welcome.
Circulation Committee [inactive]
Courier Committee (Longwell): Courier committee met and discussed moving to a smaller removable ILL label to cut costs. Some discussion occurred regarding whether we still needed the label. Consensus was that the label is still useful for identification purposes and courier logistics and if it wasn’t there sites might start printing out more transit slips. The committee is also looking at updating courier guidelines and instructions.
Development Committee [inactive]
Governance Committee (Baldo): The committee did not meet. Marie plans on calling a meeting before the next council meeting to come up with a document [new member fee] that the council can review.
VI. Previous business
New membership request – Harney County Schools: membership request granted and work will proceed on adding these new libraries. Updates – Beth is pulling together new member cost document based on guidelines established by governance committee. She is meeting with Cheryl next week to gather more information and establish timelines. Beth indicated that she is also going to start work on a member guide which contains information about Sage policies. Concern was voiced about the possibility of duplicate records with the import of records from these new libraries. Beth indicated that the Evergreen software has improved record matching and merge criteria so this shouldn’t be a problem.
Sage Council officers: Discussion ensued over the lack of volunteers/nominees for the officer positions. Perry, as fiscal officer has a lot of responsibilities and shouldn’t have to serve as chair again. Looking for someone to step up and fill this role.
VII. New business
Patron/Item record permission restrictions (Buzzy): There was a situation where a patron lost a library’s book on vacation and wanted to pay for it but the home library was unable to mark the item lost since it wasn’t their item. Marking items damaged or missing are additional permissions that have been needed. Buzzy would like to at least be able to change the status of an item. A motion to grant this permission was made, seconded, and approved. Brent will make the changes.
VIII. Agenda items for next meeting (Chair)
None offered.
X. Adjournment (Chair)